Thursday, July 16, 2009

Well today was the big day we had all been waiting for-THE DAY TO FINALLY MEET OUR SPONSORED CHILDREN! Alot of people were a little nervous, myself included. Questions swirled through our heads the night before like,"What if they are shy and don't want anything to do with us?" " What if they don't like what we have painstakingly picked out to bring them?" What if.... What if....

But we got over it quickly, when we started walking to where we were going to meet them. The plan was, we were to be able to be with the children, from about 9:00am to 4:30pm But as we were walking, Dennis,who is a Ugandan working for Compassion and has been over coordinating all our stops on this trip, came up to me and said, "I just wanted you to know that there is some transportation problems for Felix, he is on his way, but it is going to be awhile. I'll have to be honest and say my first thought was "Oh no!!, I've traveled all this way and I'm not gonna be able to see him.

There was one other sponsor who's child was delayed in traffic as well. Everything worked out fine though. The other sponsor's child arrived about 1:30, and Felix ended up arriving at about 3pm. I was thankful just to be able to spend 1 1/2 hrs with him. But it turns out our tour leaders told me that since he was late, he would be able to stay and join our group for dinner at 7:30pm. So he got to enjoy soccer/football, and we went into a wading pool to WADE but Felix decided to go swimming with his clothes on. :) Felix was accompanied by his mother, his 11 month old baby brother Joshua, and his Compassion project worker, who also helped to translate what Felix was saying to me. So, he ended up getting to stay the full amount of time. His family didn't leave until almost 10:00pm

I think God had it all planned out this way for 2 reasons:

1.)Since Felix was not there yet,I was able to do what I love doing...Taking Pictures!! I got to capture all the moments of the other sponsors meeting there kids. I also got alot of shots of them playing games etc. It was an emotional time for some! Beforehand, we had kind of wandered how, everyone would be able to take pictures as we were all meeting our kids at the same time. Problem solved!

2.) I think Felix wanted to make a Grand Entrance. He was a fashion extraordinaire as you'll see in his pictures below.

Enjoy the pictures....and if you should feel led to sponsor child please click here

Sponsors were lined up on the left and children were instructed to run across and find their sponsor.

Group photo of all sponsors, children, & Compassion project workers,

No, I didn't tell him to put his right hand like that! He did it on his own. :)

This is Felix's mother, his 11 month old brother Joshua, Felix, and me.

Felix opening his back pack full of Goodies!

And enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Well, I have about another gazillion pictures, but that is all for now, the internet is painfully slow, and I have to be up early. Tomorrow we are leaving Kampala and heading north to the town of Lira. I think it is about a 5 1/2 hr. drive. We will get a break from driving as we are stopping at a Compassion Project along the way. We will be staying in Lira until Monday morning, and then heading back here to Kampala. We fly out of Uganda bright and early Wednesday morning.

Monday, July 13, 2009

After two nights of travel with VERY LITTLE sleep, our group arrived in UGANDA!! I still can't quite get over the fact, I am in AFRICA!

We arrived at 7:45am today Uganda time,-11:45pm yesterday IL time. It took us about 1 1/2 hrs to go thru customs, and then another hour to get to our hotel. After arriving and getting checked in, we had about 1 hour to RELAX, before eating lunch and heading out to experience Compassion in Uganda. We went to the Kansanga Child Survival Project which has a program which focuses on teaching new mothers family planning, prenatal care , and infant and toddler care. The project manager, started with a worship and then expained what they do here. We got to sit in on a class for mothers and their infants and learned about the home visits they do with the mothers once or twice a month to make sure they are giving proper care to their child. There are approximately 30 mothers they minister to and I think almost every one of them, and their little ones were there today. One thing I like about Compassion is how they show us everything they do. Today they had on hand the infants records, which have recorded every visit they have had with the mother to document her progress. It also has the child's immunizations, Dr. records, everything you could think of, to make sure the child is being treated correctly.

We also watched as some of the women there, made necklaces, out of strips of paper,. They sold these to help support their families. They even asked us to sit down with them and showed us how to roll up the paper on little pins, then when it was completed were used as the beads.

Lets just say that I have NO future in jewelry making! It was also neat to watch them sit around in a group,while doing this, and every once in awhile, one of the women would start singing a worship song very softly and before you knew it, they were all belting it out dancing and praising Jesus. It was almost like you had stepped back into another era in time. Things definitely move at a slower pace here, unless you are on the roadways, then its a whole different story. We also went on home visits of three different women in the program. More on that later.

Well, its really late here, and I have to be up and ready to go at 7:00am. I will leave you with some pictures from today. The kids are awesome! Always smiling and happy, even when, their living conditions are horrendous. As you will see they are big HAMS and love to have their pictures taken and look at themselves in the viewfinder. We started out with babies today, but the older kids just kept showing up.